Vaughan Broderick

Innovation coach helping you & your organisation thrive in disruption | Teaching proven practical methods to help people innovate | UC MBA | Follow for posts about startups, innovation & leadership

If you're leading change in your organisation, you've probably seen this pattern:

Smart people working hard, moving fast - and still building things that don't stick, don't scale, and don't really matter.

I know, because I lived it for over a decade.

By 2018, I'd built an award-winning mortgage and insurance brokerage - and was completely burnt out. Brilliant people exhausting themselves on work that didn't last.

That experience changed how I see innovation.

I sold the business, took my family backpacking through 23 countries, searching for a better way.

I found an approach that changed everything:

Stop guessing. Start discovering.
Stop doing innovation to people. Start designing with them.

Today, I help leaders and teams make change work inside real organisations - with real constraints.
I've worked with hundreds of leaders across NZ and Australia - founders, executives, government teams - all asking the same question: "There has to be a better way, right?"

My work focuses on the part most innovation efforts fail at: turning good ideas into implemented change.

My approach is called DUCTRI - a framework that extends design thinking to include Resourcing and Implementation. It combines design thinking, AI tools, and behavioural science for making change work in complex organisations.

I've captured this in Innovation in Action, co-authored with Christian Walsh, including the complete toolkit and case studies from 300+ real-world projects.

What happens when you work this way:
→ Solve the right problems before committing resources
→ Teams align with clarity, not pressure
→ Change actually sticks

If you're tired of workshops that go nowhere, pilots that never scale, and good ideas dying in PowerPoint - I understand.

There is a better way.

I know because I've lived both.

INNOVATION IN ACTION (Book)
A practical system for solving the right problems and creating lasting change.

"The essential playbook for turning ideas into impact."
Jeremy Utley, Stanford d.school

"A book for people tired of innovation theatre."
David J. Bland, Co-author, Testing Business Ideas

“This is a book that helps you not just innovate, but truly change systems for good.”
David Meates, MNZM (Ex NZ Health CEO) 

→ Join the waitlist: https://innovationinactionbook.com

FUTURE-STATE THINKING NEWSLETTER
Weekly insights on design thinking, AI & behavioural science.
→ Subscribe: https://vaughanbroderick.com

CONSULTING · WORKSHOPS · TRAINING
Advisory, workshops, and training to move from stuck ideas to implemented change.
→ Get in touch: https://vaughanbroderick.com/connect/

Research Associate

Co-authoring academic research papers on innovation and design thinking.

Vaughan Broderick 🦆🌳

I support corporates in all activities focusing on INNOVATION: 
Creating new ideas and transforming them into businesses, products, or services.

IDEATION
With my help, you and your employees will come up with new ideas to move your business forward.

INNOVATION SPRINTS
I support your team in the concrete implementation of ideas from project planning all the way to the market.

INNOVATION STRATEGY
Together we develop an innovation strategy to lead your company into the future.

INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM
I assist in building an innovation culture and an innovation ecosystem, which fosters creative work and implementation of innovation in your company.

INNOVATION TRAINING
I train your employees to enable them to perform better innovation activities.


My background: 

I am a digital native with over ten years of experience in the field of innovation. I support companies in implementing innovation strategies and new business models. I catalyze ideas from corporate leaders in the areas of strategy and innovation and provide advisory from the initial thought to market entry.

I have studied computer science and business administration with a focus on human-computer interaction and management accounting at RWTH Aachen University. I continued as a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT. I hold a Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) in computer science and founded a start-up for algorithmic sports performance analysis based on big data.

Furthermore, I hold several teaching positions at the TU Munich, TH Cologne, and TU Dortmund. 

Dr. Nils Jeners

We need to make more money!

This is how most strategy discussions start.

That is exactly how this thought started, too. I developed it while working with a client on their strategy.

At the beginning, we kept the conversation intentionally narrow and pragmatic. The goal was clear: Create more money. Framing everything in financial terms helped us stay concrete and forced us to make hard trade-offs.

As we mapped their strategic initiatives against financial impact, patterns began to appear. We identified seven fundamental levers influencing outcomes. At the time, we called them “money levers”.

After letting the idea sit with me for a while, I realized it was more universal than I first thought. The logic was not really about money. It was about value. Money is just one way value gets captured.

Here is the next iteration of the idea. Seven fundamental levers of value creation.

1. Expand existing value
Deliver more of what already works. Same offerings, same audiences, greater reach, adoption, or intensity of use.

2. Strengthen value efficiency
Increase net value by reducing friction and waste. Better processes, automation, and smarter sourcing create more value without changing the offer.

3. Create new value
Introduce new products, services, markets, or business models. This is about uncovering and addressing unmet needs.

4. Accelerate value realization
Shorten the time between value creation and value capture. Faster cycles, pre-commitments, subscriptions, or upfront agreements make value useful sooner.

5. Stabilize value flows
Make value delivery and capture more predictable. Recurring relationships, contracts, and long-term commitments reduce volatility.

6. Increase lifetime value
Design models that compound over time. Scalable, repeatable, and less bespoke offerings create more total value per relationship.

7. Leverage external value creation
Enable others to create value while you orchestrate or amplify it. Platforms, ecosystems, marketplaces, and licensing extend value beyond your own capacity.

Seen this way, strategy shifts focus. Less chasing revenue targets. More understanding how value is created, strengthened, stabilized, and realized. Financial results follow.

Which of these value levers is your organization currently over-investing in. And which one are you systematically underusing?

Strategy & Innovation • I help companies decide what’s next • AI-powered, human-driven • Strategy Advisor • Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker

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We blame HIPPOs. Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

But the bigger blocker is often SHEEP.

SHEEP:
(1) Self-Hesitant Employees Expecting Executive Permission.
OR
(2) Silent Herd Escaping Executive Pressure.

SHEEP shows up even with good leadership. The leader steps back, creates space, asks for a decision. and the room freezes.

Not because someone is dominating. because ownership feels risky when you’re used to compliance.

The shift I care about is from SHEEP to entrepreneurial teammate:
Bring options and a recommendation, not a question.
Decide with imperfect info, state assumptions, run small tests.
Ask for context and constraints, not permission.
Treat outcomes like you own them.

The opposite of HIPPO isn’t silence. it’s shared ownership.

When have you seen teams break out of SHEEP?

I call this the Seesaw of Innovation:

On one end, you have organizations that feel the need to innovate but do not have the budget. Constraints are tight, resources are scarce, and every experiment feels risky. Innovation is desired, but structurally difficult.

On the other end, you have organizations that have the budget but no longer feel the need to innovate. Things work well enough. Revenue is stable. Market position feels secure. Innovation becomes optional, cosmetic, or delegated to a lab that never quite touches the core business.

Interestingly, the biggest barrier to innovation sits at both extremes.

When there is no budget, innovation is simply blocked.
When there is too much comfort, companies siply play innovation theatre.

The lowest barrier often sits somewhere in the middle. Enough pressure to create urgency, enough resources to act. That is where experimentation feels necessary and possible at the same time.

This is why disruption so often comes from outsiders, challengers, or teams operating with “just enough” resources. They cannot afford not to innovate.

For leaders, this raises an uncomfortable question.
If you have the budget, how do you recreate the need?
If you feel the need, how do you create protected space and funding to act on it?

Where do you see yourself on the seesaw right now?

New year. New beginnings. New opportunities.

That’s the energy we all love.

And it’s funny how quickly it changes when we get to the next question:

✅ Who wants innovation?
Hands up everywhere.

✅ Who wants to innovate?
Some hesitation. 

😅 Who is ready to take risks?
…better not.

Why are we so risk-averse?

Because “risk” sounds like “damage”.
And nobody wants to be the person who breaks something, loses budget, or gets blamed for the experiment that didn’t work out.

But here’s the thing: not all risk is the same.

If we treat every risk like a career-ending, irreversible decision, we will end up choosing safety. Every time.
And then we’ll wonder why innovation feels so slow.

A simple way to think about it:

Three questions that help a lot:

What’s the potential impact?
Low vs. high.

How likely is it?
Low vs. high.

Is it reversible?
Can we undo it, or is it permanent?

If we want “new opportunity”, we need “new behavior”

Not reckless risk. Not zero risk.
But smart, bounded, reversible risk.

Because innovation isn’t only new ideas.
It’s the willingness to try. To learn. To iterate. To change.

And that starts with one question:

What’s the smallest reversible step we can take this week?

In corporate innovation, the most dangerous ideas are not the bad ones.


I keep coming back to this simple pattern in corporate innovation.

Ideas are rarely judged on what they are. They are judged on how they look and on how comfortable they feel to the organization.

This creates four familiar outcomes.

Some ideas are genuinely strong and well executed. They get traction, sponsorship, and praise. Later, everyone claims they were obvious.

Some ideas are strong and even well executed, but they feel wrong. They challenge existing assumptions, threaten ownership, or arrive at the wrong time. These are quietly rejected. This is where many breakthrough ideas die.

Some ideas are weak and poorly executed. These are easy. They disappear fast, as they should.

And then there are the dangerous ones. Weak ideas with poor execution that still get approved because they sound right, match a trend, or come from the right person. They look good in decks. They consume budgets. They rarely deliver.

The uncomfortable truth is this.
Most innovation systems reward perception more than substance, and execution optics more than learning.

If we want better innovation outcomes, we need to slow down our judgments. Separate idea quality from polish. Create space for good ideas to look rough before they become clear.

Otherwise, we will keep celebrating the wrong successes and wondering why real innovation feels so rare.

10 HBR articles 
to shape how you think about corporate innovation.

Some are 35 years old. All of them still hit.
Harvard Business Review has been a source of inspiration for decades. Not because they invented innovation. But because they gave language to what practitioners were struggling to articulate.

Here's my reading list:

Here's the updated version with links included:

10 HBR articles that shaped how I think about corporate innovation.
Some are 35 years old. All of them still hit.
Harvard Business Review has been a source of inspiration for decades. Not because they invented innovation. But because they gave language to what practitioners were struggling to articulate.
Here's my reading list:

𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗼
Nagji & Tuff, 2012
👉 https://dripl.ink/XCx67

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗱𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
O'Reilly & Tushman, 2004
👉 https://dripl.ink/q4LKV

𝗕𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗢𝗰𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆
Kim & Mauborgne, 2004
👉 https://dripl.ink/JKDGY

𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽𝘀
Kanter, 2006
👉 https://dripl.ink/6CpCP

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
Drucker, 2002
👉 https://dripl.ink/Au9Bm

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜𝘀 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻?
Christensen et al., 2015
👉 https://dripl.ink/89gte

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁-𝗨𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴
Blank, 2013
👉 https://dripl.ink/ieH0v

𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀' "𝗝𝗼𝗯𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲"
Christensen et al., 2016
👉 https://dripl.ink/TBmQG

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
Prahalad & Hamel, 1990
👉 https://dripl.ink/V4bN8

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆
Pisano, 2015
https://dripl.ink/2rjB0

Classic doesn't mean outdated. It means the problems they describe keep recurring.

70-20-10 portfolio allocation. Explore vs exploit. Jobs to be done. Core competences. These concepts still show up in every strategy workshop I run.

Have a good read on a Sunday morning.

What's your favorite HBR piece on innovation?

I'll be in Switzerland this week.

While global leaders meet in Davos to discuss "Collaboration for the Intelligent Age," most organizations face a simpler challenge: turning Monday meetings into Monday momentum.

The #WEF themes are important. AI governance. Resilient growth. Balancing innovation with risk management.

But the gap between strategic dialogue and operational reality is exactly where innovation theater lives.

Big frameworks become excuses for inaction.
Strategic dialogue becomes a substitute for decisions.
And Monday looks exactly like last Monday.

Here are three practical actions you can take this week:

💎 Re-scope one AI project
Don't build an enterprise AI strategy. Pick one operational problem. Solve it in a two-week sprint. See what you actually learn.

💎 Audit your calendar
Does your time allocation actually reflect innovation as a priority? Or is it "when we have time"? Look at your calendar. Then look at your strategy deck. They probably don't match.

💎 Kill a zombie project
What legacy initiative is consuming resources but going nowhere? Name it. Stop it. Redirect that capacity to something with real potential.

Davos ends on Friday. Monday shows up whether you're ready or not.

Focus on what you do, not what gets discussed.

Strategy is still too often treated as a top-down exercise. 
A few people at the top decide... 
Everyone else executes.

That made sense when markets were stable. It makes less sense in a world shaped by constant change.

Open strategy flips the logic. It combines top down direction with bottom up insight. Employees, customers, and partners help surface risks, challenge assumptions, and spot opportunities early. Leadership still decides, but decisions are better informed and easier to execute.

It is not about giving up control. It is about recognizing that good ideas and weak signals do not sit neatly at the top of the org chart.

In complex environments, opening up strategy is often the most pragmatic choice.

How to apply open strategy:

✅ Frame a small set of concrete strategic questions to explore
✅ Open participation to employees across levels and functions
✅ Actively invite bottom up insights to challenge top down assumptions
✅ Use structured formats to collect, discuss, and synthesize input
✅ Close the loop by deciding clearly and communicating what changed

What makes me genuinely happy is seeing these impulses make a difference at my clients. Not in a loud way. But in small shifts. Better questions. Clearer prompts. Methods that improve working together.

Every time I go somewhere, I leave something behind. Sometimes it is a poster on the wall. Sometimes it is a framework. Often it is just a thought that sticks.
If it lives longer than my visit, that is my real contribution.

And yes, for everyone asking.
You can comment INSPIRATOR as much as you like. You will not get a download link.

The Prompting Inspirator is not meant to be downloaded and forgotten in a folder called “use later”. It is meant to be experienced, discussed, and adapted. And yes, it is for my clients.

It makes me smile every time I see it somewhere.

Only 6% of leaders are satisfied with their innovation performance.

80% feel their business model is under threat.

I see this disconnect in almost every client engagement.

Most companies confuse innovation with R&D. That's the real issue.

R&D advances technical knowledge within existing product lines.
Corporate innovation targets commercial outcomes and new markets.

Different goals. 
Different measures. 
Different leadership.

Three forces are reshaping corporate innovation in 2026:

💎 AI is compressing cycles radically
Renault cut transmission development from 4 years to 2.
GE shortened testing from 48 hours to 15 minutes.

💎 Teams are shrinking fast
My prediction: the two-pizza team becomes a two-person team.
What junior analysts used to handle, AI handles now.
Senior experts focus on judgment, not data gathering.

💎 External partnerships are no longer optional
P&G moved from 10-15% to 50% external idea sourcing.
Ecosystems drive nearly 14% of annual revenues.

Here's what the 2026 playbook actually looks like:

Innovation isn't isolated R&D experiments. It's integrated systems with commercial targets.

Innovation theater costs money.
Commercial outcomes are what actually matter.

Where are you stuck right now?

---

I write about Innovation & Strategy.
If you like this, follow Dr. Nils Jeners 🔔

As 2025 came to an end, I received many kind messages, cards, and even presents.
All thanking me for the work we did together.

Thank you very much for that.
I truly appreciate every single message.
Each one makes me smile, because it means someone took a moment to think of me.

I work in innovation, and I like to do things a little differently.
For me, what matters most is not only what happened.
It is also what comes next.

That is why I am sending out New Year’s cards.
Yes, I am thankful for the past year.
And yes, I take time to reflect on what we achieved.

But I am also excited about the future.
I enjoy welcoming what is ahead and starting to shape new plans.

So let the year begin.
I am open to work.
Helping to
design new businesses,
craft strategies, and
build new products.

I am looking forward to what we will create next.

I am a computer scientist.
I ❤️ tech.

But when it comes to thinking, planning, and designing. 

Paper still wins.

I ❤️ paper.

💎 Paper is incredibly flexible.
You can sketch, cut, draw arrows, fold it, glue it, and instantly change its structure. There is no mode, no tool selection, no friction. Your thoughts flow at the same speed as your pen.

💎 Paper does not distract.
There are no notifications, no Slack pings, no emails, no temptation to open yet another tab. Unlike a screen with 100 open browser tabs in the background, paper gives your brain a single, quiet space to think.

💎 Paper is naturally collaborative.
Tools like Miro are great. But being in the same room, standing around the same sheet of paper, pointing, drawing, and arguing over the same artifact creates a shared focus that digital tools rarely replicate.

💎 Paper lets you think with your hands.
Writing, sketching, and gesturing are part of the thinking process. Ideas feel more physical, more connected, and often clearer when your hands are involved.

I will always build with technology.
But I will often start with paper.

What about you?

Most “strategy” problems are execution problems.

The pattern I keep seeing is simple. We set annual goals, January is strong, then life and meetings happen. The timeline feels long, so urgency disappears.

The 12-Week Year approach fixes that by changing the unit of time. You treat 12 weeks like a full year. Suddenly every week matters.

Here are the core ideas I used to build this carousel:

1. Shorter horizon, sharper focus
If “the year” is far away, it is easy to delay. A 12-week cycle creates urgency without drama.

2. System over motivation
Motivation comes and goes. A simple rhythm wins. Plan, execute, review, repeat.

3. Weekly tactics beat vague goals
Big goals are outcomes. Progress comes from weekly actions you can actually complete.

4. Keep score to stay honest
Track what you do, not just what you hope for. A weekly execution score turns progress into something visible.

5. Protect time like it is a resource
If you do not block time for priorities, your calendar will fill itself. Strategic blocks, buffer blocks, breakout blocks.

It is not too late to start the year with this approach.

If you want to try it this week, do this in 15 minutes:

✅ Pick one 12-week objective
✅ Write 3 actions for next week that directly move it
✅ Block 2×60 minutes on your calendar to execute

What is the one goal you would like to make real in the next 12 weeks?

Hackathons taught organizations a powerful lesson.

When you remove friction, bring cross-functional people together, and timebox decisions, learning accelerates.

CORPORATE MAKERSPACES
are the institutional version of that lesson.

If you want entrepreneurial thinking, a one or two-day workshop is not enough. It produces a spike of energy, then the system resets.

A corporate makerspace turns that spike into a standing capability. A dedicated, safe space where employees can design, test, and iterate without the usual penalties. Low stakes for early experiments, clear guardrails, and permission to learn fast.

In that sense, the makerspace is increasingly a place to prototype the business. Not only building artifacts, but testing assumptions with users and data.

What gets prototyped in a mature corporate makerspace:
🔬 Products and features, but also end-to-end experiences
🔬 Customer journeys, not just interfaces
🔬 Pricing, packaging, and positioning
🔬 Services and operating processes
🔬 Small pilots that validate real-world adoption

The core is one loop. Build, test, decide.
1. Define the hypothesis. What must be true.
2. Run the smallest credible experiment.
3. Test with real users in context.
4. Measure against pre-set success criteria.
5. Share learnings so the company compounds knowledge.

The difference between a makerspace and a showroom is the operating model.
A real corporate makerspace has user access, experiment standards, safe sandboxes, lightweight governance, and a clear path from prototype to scale.

Hackathons proved the mindset. Makerspaces make it a capability.

PS: AI generated image

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